risings a modern security service was a vital necessity to protect
the autocracy. Like his tsarist and Soviet successors, he tended to
exaggerate the threat of dissent while insisting on greater power
for the political police.BENTLEY, ELIZABETH (1908–1963).Bentley, a Columbia Uni-
versity graduate and longtime Soviet agent, became one of the most
controversial witnesses of Soviet espionage in the United States.
For more than a decade, Bentley served as a courier and agent for
the NKVDin New York. She had a torrid love affair with the So-
viet case officer, Joseph Golos, which ended with his death in- Bentley was highly valued by senior Soviet intelligence offi-
cers serving in America, and was given the code name “Umnitsa”
(Clever Girl). Among the agents she helped run was Duncan Lee,
an official of the Office of Strategic Services(OSS). In 1945 she
found the rezidenturadistancing itself from her, and she was in-
formed that her role as a principal agent would be taken over by a
Soviet intelligence officer. Whether she was angered by this arbi-
trary decision, depressed over the loss of her lover, or afraid of be-
ing caught, she decided to defect. In November 1945, she ap-
proached the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in New York
City, informed them of her role as a Soviet agent, and prepared a
112-page affidavit detailing her life as a Soviet agent.
In 1948 Bentley testified before the U.S. Congress in public hear-
ings, naming a number of prominent officials as Soviet agents, in-
cluding Alger Hiss, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
Harry Dexter White, and OSS official Duncan Lee. An FBI agent
commenting on the value of her report noted that before she arrived,
“we had files, here, there, and everywhere,” but her reporting “pulled
it all together.” For the first time, the FBI understood the complexity
of Soviet espionage in the United States.
Bentley was widely disliked for her willingness to testify at trials
and grand juries. She retired to teach at a girls’ reform school. She
died of cancer made worse by heavy drinking. Her testimony and au-
tobiography were widely discredited by revisionist historians for
more than 30 years. However, NKVD cables intercepted by the
United States in the Venonaprogram indicate that she was an im-
portant source and that most of her testimony was accurate.
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